Golf is a game of immense popularity that is played by players at all ages and all levels of skill. Largely because of the appeal of golf to such a wide variety of players, a correspondingly wide variety of golf equipment has been conceived, including, among others devices for washing golf balls and for protecting balls and clubs and other equipment, carts for carrying clubs and bags, portable stools for the comfort of players, motorized carts for transportation of players about the course, scorekeeping devices, specialized putters and other clubs, and the like.
As golf involves repeated placement of tees and golf balls on the tees preparatory to a tee shot, and retrieval of tees and balls from the ground, various devices have also been conceived to facilitate such ball and tee placement and retrieval, such being well represented in the prior art. For example, all of the following U.S. patents disclose golf ball and/or tee handling devices: U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,466,650, 4,063,769, 4,021,068, 3,412,897, 3,318,628, 3,186,593, 2,943,856 and 2,609,198.
Although generally suited for their intended purposes, the prior art golf ball handling devices such as those disclosed in the above cited patents have exhibited certain shortcomings. Those devices which have a plurality of projecting fingers adapted to grip a golf ball at circumferentially spaced locations about the perimeter of the ball may prove to be difficult to use in that the ball is either gripped securely or completely released and unrestrained whereby actual use of these devices for precise placement of a golf ball may be quite difficult. Other known devices from among the above patents are suited only to ball retrieval and cannot be used for ball placement.
Due to these and other shortcomings of the prior art, golfers needing distance in the placement and retrieval of balls and tees have continually sought improved apparatus for the purpose.